A gunman came through the window screaming

The Executioner threw himself flat as a wild, ragged spray of rounds slapped out in his direction. He hit the pavement hard and grunted.

Bolan thrust his arm out straight and rolled over onto his side as he tried to target the charging man. Still firing, the man shuffled toward the nominal protection of a dented car. He went to one knee behind the bumper of the dark blue vehicle and brought his weapon to his shoulder.

Bolan didn’t hesitate. He rolled onto his stomach and took his Glock in both hands. His first shot hit wide of the gas hatch. His second punctured it. A jet of gasoline shot out in an arc and splashed the ground.

Bolan squeezed his trigger twice and put two more bullets through the bleeding gas tank. The second bullet ignited the flammable gasses trapped inside. A ball of flame erupted and was followed hard by a wave of concussive force. It was like hell on earth.

MACK BOLAN®

The Executioner

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

#331 Assault Force

#332 Slaughter House

#333 Aftershock

#334 Jungle Justice

#335 Blood Vector

#336 Homeland Terror

#337 Tropic Blast

#338 Nuclear Reaction

#339 Deadly Contact

#340 Splinter Cell

#341 Rebel Force

The Executioner®

Rebel Force

Don Pendleton

Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.

—Elizabeth I, 1533–1603

People acting out of cowardice make mistakes. When they do, I will be ready to take action.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

1

The factory sat on the banks of the Sunzha River. As silent as a mausoleum, the building was surrounded by warehouses and industrial structures all bombed to rubble in the wake of the second Chechen war. An expensive black Mercedes sat abandoned in the half-acre parking lot. The sky was starless under close cloud cover. Rain fell, dirty gray from the sky.

Mack Bolan drew his mouth into a tight line. He scanned the building and the area around it through his night-vision goggles. He searched for telltale smeary silhouettes in the monochromatic green of the high-tech device but saw nothing. Even the engine block on the Mercedes was cool. The sounds of traffic came to him from other areas of the city, muted across the distance. Close by, his ears detected only the whisper of cold wind skipping across the polluted river.

Bolan scrutinized the building, determining his approach. To the rear of the building loading docks with big roll-up bay doors sat shut and locked. The front of the building was made up of wide glass windows, and revolving doors that led into the company front offices. If Bolan approached from that direction, he’d have his back to the access road and an impossibly wide front to cover.

On the side of the building closest to him a maintenance door was set at the top of a short flight of concrete steps. Off in the distance, Bolan heard the rotors of a helicopter cruising low over the city. The Executioner’s finely honed battle instincts whispered to him. Danger lay on every side.

The Mercedes, parked in the open, with no attempt at concealment or subterfuge in a city under martial law, was an enigma. Bolan wanted to be the wild card, not have some high-end vehicle fill that role. Sitting there, sleek and black and silent, it announced a human presence in a location supposedly long abandoned.

Bolan again scanned the area.

Grozny had been locked down under the threat of terrorist action by Chechen separatists. Police units patrolled in armored personnel carriers and army checkpoints secured every major road and highway leading into the city. Russia’s federal army worked hard at a three-point mission. Keep the oil flowing, keep the rebel insurgency suppressed and minimize troop casualties. Those protocols had resulted in an occupying force prone to using their weapons more than restraint.

Bolan knew he had taken a grave risk by going armed into the sovereign territory of an allied nation dealing with the threat of a violent insurrection. It was an insurrection with increasingly solidified ties to the worldwide jihadist movement. Moving incognito, Bolan had flown into Grozny using Associated Press credentials as Matt Cooper, freelance reporter.

Hal Brognola from Justice had secured the location of a cache drop used by CIA paramilitary teams during the Chechen wars. Slipping free from his state-sponsored monitors, Bolan had managed to get to the drop and secure money, equipment and a Kevlar armor vest, as well as personal weapons.

Bolan moved forward, scrambling out of the empty drainage ditch that ran parallel to the building. He approached a chain-link fence and dropped down, removing wire cutters from his combat harness. Using deft, practiced movements, Bolan snipped an opening and bent back one edge.

Bolan slid through headfirst and popped up on the other side. Traveling in a wide crescent, designed to take him as far as possible from the Mercedes, Bolan approached the maintenance entrance. He scanned the triple row of windows set above the building’s ground floor for any sign of movement. As he neared the building, Bolan pulled a Glock 17 from his shoulder rig.

Bolan crept up the short flight of stairs leading to the door, clicking the selector switch on his pistol off safety as he moved. Reaching the door, Bolan pulled a lock pick gun from a cargo pocket and slid it expertly home. He pulled the trigger on the locksmith device and heard the bolt securing the door snap back. Replacing the lock pick gun, Bolan put a hand on the door handle, holding his 9 mm pistol up and ready.

He thought about the intelligence intercept that had come through at the last moment. Because of strained relations with the Russian government over the Iraq war and the status of Iran’s nuclear program, the Oval Office had decided to keep America’s ally out of the loop. Enzik Garabend, an Armenian middleman responsible for financial networks and communications between disparate terror cells, was on his way to the Chechen capital. A meet had been planned with Kamir Abdhula Zanibar, head of a violent, Whabbism influenced, splinter militia of the main Chechen separatist movement.

In order to make use of the real-time information, Brognola had been forced to rush Bolan into place. Garabend was known never to be without his laptop. Encrypted inside of its software was believed to be a blueprint to the worldwide financial networks of the global jihad, linking Abu Sayef in Southeast Asia, with Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda in the Middle East, all the way to EU splinter groups and Chechen field commanders. It was a brass ring worth killing for.

Before he moved he took a final scan of his surroundings. The industrial wasteland was eerily still. Taking a breath, the Executioner turned the handle and pulled the door open. He stepped through the black mouth of the open door and into the darkened interior of the building. He shuffled smoothly to one side, sank into a tight crouch, pistol up, and let the door swing shut behind him.

Bolan quickly took in the hall in both directions. It was empty. Rising, he began moving down the corridor toward the rear of the building.

The building was oppressively still and quiet around him. The perimeter hallway ran the length of the structure, with doors leading to the building’s interior spaced at intervals along the inside wall. At the far end Bolan could make out the heavy steel of a fire door that would open to stairs.

The intelligence on the building layout had been spotty. The factory had served many functions over the years and had played little part in the Chechen insurrection or in Russian oil concerns. All Bolan knew was that Garabend, with his bodyguards, would be in an office suite on the second floor for seven hours before departing Grozny for Damascus.

Bolan entered the stairwell. He craned his neck, looking upward. Nothing moved on the stairs or crouched in the gloomy landings. He tracked his scanning vision with the poised muzzle of the Glock 17. The hair on the back of Bolan’s neck stood raised like the hackles of a dog.

The stale smell of dust and disuse was hanging heavy in the air. Faintly beneath that was the slight odor of machine oil coming up from the factory floor. Bolan’s straining ears detected nothing. He placed the reinforced soles of his boots carefully on the first metal rung of the building’s skeletal framed staircase and began to climb.

He edged around the curve of the stair. The raised grip of the pistol’s butt snuggled tightly into his palms. He kept his Weaver stance tight, keyed-up to react to the slightest motion. Garabend was an established veteran of life as a hunted man. Security so apparently lax was unexplainable in such a man.

Reaching the second-floor landing, Bolan snuggled up tight against the fire door. He pressed his back against the wall beside the door handle. The seal of the landing door was too tight for him to use a fiber optics surveillance cable borescope. The heavy steel door effectively muted any potential sound coming from the second-floor hallway.

Gritting his teeth, Bolan pulled the door open and darted his head around the edge. He was met with silence and darkness. The hallway ran for several yards, office doors on one side, dark windows facing the parking lot on the other. The hall turned in a L-break at the far end toward the front of the building.

Bolan moved down the center of the hallway, ready to drop prone or respond with deadly fire at the slightest threat. He moved as silently as his considerable skills allowed, but to his own adrenaline-enhanced hearing, his footfalls echoed loudly. Reaching the bend in the hallway, Bolan took a rapid look around the corner. Along this stretch, doorways marked both sides of the hall at intermittent lengths.

Halfway down he picked out a crumpled form. From the green smear under the still shape, Bolan could tell the figure had lost a lot of blood, and recently, as the signature still held a good amount of heat. Instinctively Bolan snapped his line of sight up, scanning the corridor for any sign of movement. Seeing none, Bolan slid around the corner and into the passage.

The heat register meant the downed figure was either still alive, or had been struck down just minutes before. Keeping low, Bolan moved forward. His nostrils flared under the saddle of the night-vision goggles. The reek of cordite was heavy on the stale air of the abandoned factory.

Going up to the body, Bolan looked it over quickly. The figure remained still. Reaching his free hand out, Bolan felt for a pulse on the figure’s neck, found none. He peered down, straining to make out facial features in the ambivalent light of the NVGs. The figure was male. A thick beard fell across a broad swell of chest. He was dressed in a Russian army pattern camouflage parka. There was a folding stock, paratrooper model AKS-74 under the man’s body.

Bolan touched the barrel. The metal was cool. The weapon had not been fired. Scanning the hallway, Bolan used his fingers to probe the corpse, trying to ascertain the source of his injuries. The face was intact, the torso clear of wounds. Frowning, Bolan felt the back of the man’s head.

His fingers came away wet.

The location on the back of the head where the spinal cord merged with the back of skull was the medulla oblongata, Latin for “stem of the rose.” Bolan knew it was the collective location for all of the nerves of the central nervous system. The hypothalamus hung there like a grape cluster, regulating breath and the beating of the heart. In the special operations community, a shot to the medulla oblongata was known as “popping the grape” and was a preferred method of neutralizing subjects from behind.

This hadn’t been a sloppy assassination. The dead man—Chechen, Bolan guessed, given the beard and Russian army jacket—had been coolly dispatched from up close and personal by someone with the nerves of a professional killer.

Bolan rose and stepped over the corpse. The man had been killed directly in front of a door on the outer side of the hallway. His intelligence information hadn’t been specific as to where on the second floor Garabend was supposed to be having his meeting.

“This mission is going to be very ad hoc, Striker,” Brognola had warned.

Bolan knew ad hoc was government speak for “half-assed.”

Bolan also knew that, in his War Everlasting, “half-assed” got you killed. But he felt, just as Brognola did, that the information on Garabend’s laptop was worth the risk. Worth his life even, if every drop of his blood was counted against the blood of innocents. Innocents Bolan had sworn his life to defend and avenge.

Bolan put his hand on the office door.

It swung open easily under his touch.

2

The Executioner glided into the room, pistol tracking ahead of him. The room was a reception area leading, presumably, to a private office farther back. The space had been stripped of furniture when the last owners of the building had pulled out ahead of the increasing violence and the brutal Russian air force. There were no pictures on the walls, no furniture or filing cabinets set up. Overhead, exposed wiring hung down like snakes from a ceiling stripped bare of light fixtures.

Bodies lay scattered around the room. In the heat sensitive night-vision goggles, the walls looked as if they had been splattered with florescent paint from the spilled blood. The reek of cordite was overwhelming in the tightly confined space. Spent shell casings pressed up against Bolan’s feet as he moved through the room. Four corpses were tossed with careless abandon around the enclosure.

More of the folding stock AKS-74s lay in hands quickly cooling in death. The office was a stinking abattoir filled with the stench of torn flesh and the copper tang of pooling blood. Bolan kept his eyes trained on the doorway leading into the inner recesses of the suite. His recon had revealed a surprising turn of events. It was time to adapt, to improvise, to overcome. Carefully, Bolan crouched. He secured an assault rifle by its pistol grip, tugging it free from its owner’s dead fingers.

Tucking the skeletal buttstock into his hip, Bolan ensured the safety was disengaged. Once outfitted, he holstered his Glock 17. Safely putting his pistol away freed his hands, and Bolan snapped down the folding stock of the paratrooper carbine to make it more manageable in the enclosed environment. Things were ugly now. The Executioner had been thrown a bloody curve ball, and he was determined to take it in stride.

There was an infrared penlight built into the goggles. When activated, it was like a flashlight in the lenses of the night-vision device, visible only in the infrared spectrum. Using it, Bolan quickly determined that Garabend was not one of the dead.

The soldier stood, slowly unfolding from the crouch he had used to navigate the room. The soles of his boots were tacky with blood. Keeping the AKS tight against his torso, he padded toward the door to the inner office.

Behind the office door came the end of the line. Secrecy and stealth became superfluous the instant he crossed through that final door. Bolan had every reason to suspect that he would find the corpse of Enzik Garabend inside. What he was less certain of, given the freshness of the kills, was whether or not he would find Garabend’s murderer in there as well.

Standing at an angle by the office door, Bolan surveyed it as carefully as he could through his NVGs. The door was closed. That seemed wrong. Once the target had been taken out, and considering the mess in the outer chamber, why go to the trouble of carefully closing a door behind you as you left?

The Executioner made his decision. Stepping forward, he raised up high on the ball of one foot and brought his right knee up to his chest where he held the AKS at port arms. Exhaling sharply through his nose, Bolan snapped his curled leg out with explosive power. He thrust through on the breaching kick, his big foot slamming into the door just inside of the handle, even to where the bolt ran in the lock housing.

The door popped open under the sharp force and swung wildly back. Bolan recoiled to one side in an attempt to avoid any returning fire from inside the room. After a heartbeat he tucked in behind the muzzle of his appropriated AKS and moved rapidly through the entrance. He swept the rifle muzzle around as he entered the room, his feet moving in a shuffling motion. His eyes sought the parameters of the room, seeing the contents of the chamber in terms first of motion, second in broad details of shape. He felt a breeze on his face, smelled the damp pollution stink of the Sunzha River bisecting Grozny.

A large desk dominated the middle of the room, a dark hulk in his goggles. The top of it glowed with a dripping luminescence. Behind the desk a body cooled as the night breeze blew in through a window blown to shards. Moving carefully, his nerves crackling with the electricity of potential danger, Bolan checked the corpse.

He reached down and unceremoniously yanked the dangling head up by a shock of greasy hair. In the IR enhancement light, the bland features of Enzik Garabend looked back up at him. The middle-aged man’s eyes bulged sightless from his death-slackened face. Bloody holes the size of coins riddled the man’s chest, ruining an expensive suit under a waterproof parka.

Bolan was too late.

Disgusted, he put a boot on the edge of the office chair and kicked it over in frustration. It slid a few inches and then toppled. The heavy, loose form of Garabend’s body slipped onto the floor with all the deftness of a sopping wet bag of cement. Out of professional habit, he quickly looked around on the floor for Garabend’s laptop, or any other effects. Nothing. The place had been stripped clean of all but the ex-terrorist’s corpse.

Now that he was sure of Garabend’s fate, Bolan knew he had to exit the scene as quickly as possible. The abandoned factory had become red hot. Too hot for a foreigner packing a military arsenal on Russian soil in a time of heightened attacks by a savage, determined insurgency. He had to get out of there, retreat to his safehouse and contact Brognola for extraction.

Suddenly Bolan froze. Some faint sound, almost inaudible on the periphery of his hearing, came to him. He cocked his head to the side, tense.

He couldn’t recapture the sound again, now that he was actively listening. In the graveyard silence that surrounded him, Bolan couldn’t be sure he’d heard anything to begin with. It was unsettling. The Executioner didn’t spook. He slowly sank onto one knee by the sprawled corpse of the Armenian terror merchant and ran an expert hand over the man’s body, fishing through his pockets.

Nothing.

Bolan turned and stood. It was then that the necessary angle of vision was correct. The battery light from Garabend’s satellite phone burned green, suddenly obvious in the gloomy room. Bolan frowned, head cocked, listening for any sound coming from outside the office. He heard nothing to give him pause and turned his attention back to the sat phone. Garabend’s phone was a good catch, not the same as his laptop, to be sure, but still good. It seemed hard to believe that professional operators capable of a hit of this magnitude could have possibly missed it.

Still, though the takedown had all the earmarks of top-line training, Bolan figured it couldn’t have been Russian Spesnaz teams. The entire site would have been locked down for the entry team. Intelligence technicians would have been crawling across the site post-action, searching for any evidence. Garabend’s bullet riddled corpse would have been whisked away and paraded on Russian television. After the Belsan school siege, dead terrorists made for great ratings from an angry, vengeance minded Russian nation.

Whoever had taken out Garabend had been a player; but not official Russian. Bolan picked up the phone. It was sticky with the dead man’s blood. Bolan powered the device off and placed it in a pocket of his nightsuit. The phone provided a clue, in and of itself. The high-tech devices made doing business in the modern age much, much easier, especially from remote or uncivilized areas, but they were a liability as well.

Worldwide, terrorists had learned a lesson a decade earlier, in the spring of 1996, from the death of Dzokhar Dudayev. The Chechen leader had known he needed to limit the time he spent using the satellite phone given to him by his Islamic allies in Turkey. The survivor of two Russian assassination attempts had been wary of Moscow’s ability to home in on his communication signal and thus his location.

But on the evening of April 21, Dudayev, baited by Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s offer of peace talks, called an adviser in Moscow to discuss the impending negotiations.

Dudayev stayed on the phone too long.

American spy satellites, trained on Iraq and Kuwait, were quickly turned north to the Caucasus Mountains and Chechnya, according to media reports by a former communications specialist with the U.S. National Security Agency—NSA—The satellites pinpointed the Chechen leader’s location to within feet of his satellite phone signal, and the coordinates were sent to a Russian fighter jet.

Dudayev was killed by two laser-guided air-to-surface missiles while still holding the phone that had pinpointed his location.

Had Garabend made the same mistake? Only instead of missiles, had a call he made triggered a hit squad or some lone, hyper-skilled, assassin? Whatever the case, Bolan had enough to go on for the moment. Once Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman and his team got hold of the information in the communication device, they would have plenty of clues for further operations.

Bolan stepped around the desk and moved through the open door into the outer office chamber. The bodies of the dead Armenian’s bodyguards still lay sprawled around in haphazard disarray. After years of experience, Bolan had a critical, almost gifted, eye for crime-scene forensics. He was able to recreate the events of even the most horrific battle by the position of corpses, spent shell casings and blood spatter. In this case, rushed for time, he was unable to conclude whether this butcher’s work had been done by a coordinated team or a single, talented professional.

Bolan moved carefully through the room. He held his AKS at the ready as he approached the door. His feeling of disquiet had not subsided. He couldn’t place his unease, and that made it all the more bothersome. He stalked forward, pausing at the door leading out into the hall.

He stopped, sensed nothing, moved forward.

All hell broke loose.

3

When he stepped through the door and entered the hall, Bolan felt as if he had moved into a field of static electricity. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck lifted straight up as cold squirts of adrenaline surged into his body. The night fighter reacted instantly, without conscious thought. He dropped to one knee and leaned back in the doorway, sweeping the barrel of his AKS up and triggering a blast.

The unmistakable pneumatic cough of a sound-suppressed weapon firing full-automatic assaulted Bolan’s ears across the short distance. Shell casings clattered onto the linoleum floor, mixing with the sound of a weapon bolt leveraging back and forth rapidly. Bolan felt the angry whine of bullets fill the space where his head and chest had been only a heartbeat before.

The Executioner targeted diagonally across and down the office hall, firing his Russian assault rifle with practiced, instinctive ease. He let the recoil of the carbine shuttering in his strong grip carry him back through the doorway behind him in a tight roll. From his belly Bolan thrust the muzzle around the doorjamb and arced the weapon back and forth as he laid down quick, suppressive blasts.

The 5.45 mm rounds were deafening in the confined space and his ears rang painfully from the noise. Bolan reached up and jerked his night-vision goggles down so that they dangled from the rubber strap around his neck. He heard the bullets from his assailant’s answering burst smack into the plasterboard of the outer wall with smacks that rang louder than the muzzle-braked weapon’s own firing cycle.

From the impacts, Bolan determined the shooter was using a submachine gun and not an assault rifle, though he was hard-pressed to identify caliber with the suppressor in use. Bolan scrambled backward and rested his rifle barrel across the still-warm corpse of a dead bodyguard. If there was more than one assassin out there, and he were determined to get him, the person would either fire and maneuver to breach the room door, or possibly use grenades to clear him out.

There was silence for a long moment. Bolan’s head raced through strategies and options. If the assassin’s intent had been escape, then why had he bothered to stay behind or try to take Bolan out? If the unknown assailant was armed for a quiet kill, then that would indicate he was probably not carrying ordnance much heavier than the silenced submachine gun being used.

The main thing, Bolan’s experience told him, was getting momentum back into his possession. He quickly stripped an extra rifle from a dead bodyguard and hooked the sling over his shoulder. Conscious of how vulnerable he was, Bolan crawled back toward the door. He maneuvered the barrel of his AKS through the entrance and triggered an exploratory blast, conducting a recon by fire. Precious seconds ticked away.

Almost immediately, Bolan’s aggressive burst was answered with a tightly controlled one. Bullets tore into the wooden door frame and broke up the floor in front of his weapon. Bolan ducked back. He had what he needed. He had found a way to exploit his heavier armament.

The gunman had taken position across and two doors down the hall from the room where Bolan was trapped. From that location the gunmen controlled the fields of fire up and down the hall, preventing Bolan from leaving the office without exposing himself to withering, short-range fire.

Again, Bolan triggered a long, ragged blast. He tore apart the door of the office directly opposite him, then ran his larger caliber rounds down the hall to pour a flurry of lead through the sniper’s door. Tracer fire lit up the hallway with surrealistic strips of light like laser blasts in some low-budget science-fiction movie. Bolan could smell his own sweat and the hot oil of his AKS-74. The heavy dust hanging in the air, kicked up by the automatic weapon fire, choked him.

Bolan ducked back around as the gunman triggered an answering burst. Bolan heard the smaller caliber rounds strike the wall outside his door, saw how they failed to penetrate the building materials. It confirmed his suspicions that he was facing no more than a 9 mm caliber in the killer’s weapon.

Bolan snarled, gathering himself, and thrust his weapon out the office door a final time. He triggered the AKS and the assault rifle bucked in his hands. Bolan sprinted out through the doorway hard behind his covering fire. His rounds fell like sledgehammers around the door to the room of his ambusher. Hot gases warmed his wrists as the bolt of his weapon snapped open and shut, open and shut, as he carried his burst out to improbable length even as he raced forward.

Two steps from the office door directly opposite Garabend’s death room, Bolan’s magazine ran dry and the bolt locked open. Without hesitation, he flung down the empty weapon and dived forward. The big man’s hard shoulder struck the door. Already riddled with 5.45 mm bullets, the flimsy construction was no match for Bolan’s heavy frame and he burst through it into the room.

The Executioner went down with his forward momentum, landing on the shoulder he had used as a battering ram and somersaulting over it smoothly. He came up on one knee and swung his second AKS carbine off his shoulder, leveling it at the wall separating his position from the gunman’s. Bolan triggered his weapon from the waist, raking it back and forth in a tight, low Z-pattern. The battlefield rounds chewed through plywood, drywall and insulation with ease, bursting out the other side with terminal velocity.

Still firing, Bolan smoothly uncoiled out of his combat crouch, keeping the arc of his weapon angled downward to better catch an enemy likely pinned against the floor. His intentions were merciless. Momentum, and an attacker’s aggression, were with Bolan now, on him like a fugue. Coming to his feet, he shifted the AKS pistol grip from his right to his left hand. His magazine came up dry as he shifted his weight back toward the shattered door to the room.

The handle of Bolan’s Glock 17 filled the palm of his free hand as he fired the last rounds through the looted AKS. He was moving, lethally graceful, back out the door to the room, his feet engaged through a complicated series of steps. Out in the hall, smoke from weapons fire and dust billowed in the already gloomy hall.

Bolan stepped out long and lunged forward, sinking to one knee as he came to the edge of his ambusher’s door. He made no attempt to slow his momentum but instead let it carry him down to the floor. He breached the edge of the enemy door, letting the barrel of the Glock 17 pistol lead the way. He caught the image of a dark-clad form sprawled out on the floor of the room.

The 9 mm pistol coughed in a double tap, catching the downed figure in the shoulder and head. Blood splashed up and the figure’s skull mushroomed out, snapping rudely to the side on a slack neck. A chunk of cottage-cheeselike material splattered out and struck a section of bullet riddled wall.

Bolan popped up, returned to his feet. He moved into the room, weapon poised, ready to react to even the slightest motion or perceived movement. After the frenzied action and brutal cacophony of the gun battle, the sudden return of silence and still felt deafening, almost oppressive. Approaching the dead man, Bolan narrowed his eyes, trying to quickly take in details. Muzzle-flash had ruined his night vision.

Frustrated, Bolan dragged his NVGs back into position and turned on the infrared penlight. The room returned to view in the familiar monochromatic greenish tint. Bolan looked over at the dead gunman’s weapon. From the unique silhouette he recognized the subgun as a PP-19 Bizon. Built on a shortened AKS-74 receiver, it had the signature cylindrical high-capacity magazine attached under the fore grip and the AKS folding buttstock. The weapon was usually associated with Russian federal police or army troops, but international arms merchants had been turning up with them more and more as the Russian economy went through its series of shortfalls.

Bolan rolled the man over. Any hopes for identification were gone. The man’s face held all the structural integrity of mush. Bolan could easily see the man’s thick, tangled beard, however. One of Garabend’s bodyguards who had survived the attack?

Bolan knew he didn’t have a lot of time. In a city locked down under martial law, the sound of the assault rifle he had been forced to use would draw unwanted attention very quickly. Bolan patted the dead man down. He found a leather wallet filled with Russian bank notes but devoid of identification.

The soldier pulled a thin, flat-faced digital camera from one of the carriers on his harness. He clicked off the IR light and settled his goggles on his forehead. He turned the camera on and opened the lens protector. Without preamble he grabbed the doughy-fleshed hand of the dead man by his index finger. Cradling the camera securely in his palm, Bolan rolled the man’s finger across the lens facing of the camera as carefully as any police desk sergeant at a big city precinct house.

Bolan held up the camera, letting the dead killer’s hand drop unceremoniously. It struck the bare floor with a dull clap. Bolan pointed the camera at a blank stretch of wall unmarred by his penetrating gunfire. He closed his eyes against the flash and snapped a picture. Later, he would download the snapshot and send it back to Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, for analysis. If the shooter was a bodyguard, that was fine. If he was something else, then Bolan needed to know.

He stood and put the camera away. He grabbed his Glock. It was time to go. Past time.

4

Bolan’s forward operating station in Grozny was an old CIA operations safehouse left over from the Chechen conflicts. Maintained as part of a Global Deployment Readiness Plan by the Operations Division, the residence was little used but constantly prepped. It provided stripped down, untraceable tools for Western intelligence operatives who found themselves working outside of normal geographical station mandates.

Working outside of normal geographical station mandates was something Mack Bolan knew all about.

Upon returning to the house Bolan immediately downloaded the picture of the dead assassin’s fingerprint and e-mailed it through an encrypted, anonymous server along with a brief sitrep, to a Stony Man capable site. Aaron Kurtzman would access all federal and international databanks in an effort to find a match.

Bolan drank a beer and made himself a sandwich from the pickings in the refrigerator. He surveyed his surroundings from every window in the place, looked in closets and behind closed doors until he felt like he knew the layout of the place well enough to navigate it in the dark, under fire if need be. He’d made the decision to delay his extraction until Hal Brognola and the Stony Man team could reconfigure operational alternatives based on the changed situation.

Jack Grimaldi was poised to infiltrate Grozny from a merchant ship anchored in the Caspian. The ship was run under a triple sponsor program combining Naval Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA. All offices were coordinated by the post 9/11 Director of National Intelligence office. Task Force 280, as it was coded, provided civilian-use cover of ocean-based assets for government operations. Brognola had managed to insert the veteran Stony Man pilot into the group with a minimum of fuss.

Bolan paced, calm, but filled with a pent-up energy left over from his confrontation with the assassin. Across the room, where he had left it on the table while fixing himself something to eat, his sat phone began to buzz.

Bolan crossed the room quickly and picked it up. He instantly recognized the gruff voice of Hal Brognola on the other end of the encrypted line. The soldier walked over and looked out the window at the quiet residential street from behind the window blinds. He turned his back on the scene and stepped farther into the old house.

“Striker?” Brognola asked.

“Go ahead,” Bolan answered.

“You safe? Things quiet?”

“For now. What do you have?”

“I’ve got a whole bunch of questions and not too many answers,” the big Fed said.

“You manage to get an ID off that print I sent you?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure did. We have a situation. The DNI has reacted to the intelligence and asked me to intervene in the matter.”

“What problem would this be?”

“The print you got off the shooter came back to one Andre Nicolov, former GRU commando.”

“Okay, so he was with the Main Intelligence Directorate. Lots of ex-military types run for-profit ops these days,” Bolan said.

“Problem is, this guy is known to be the chief operator for a player known as Sable, also ex-GRU, ex-SVR and now a freelance information broker. Sable has been the source of a CIA counterintelligence operation in Grozny. A consortium of ex-Soviet physicists and various research scientists of Chechen ethnicity opened a think tank group called the Caucasus Data Institute. The SVR, among others, was hot to get their hands on what they were cooking up. The CIA approached them undercover as a private firm about security in an effort to get our fingers into the pie.”

“How does Sable fit into this?”

“She ran a surveillance and procurement operation against the institute. By all accounts, the most successful one. She was always one step ahead of Grozny Station.”

“She?” Bolan said. “Go on.”

“Last year a field officer named Sanders was put on the case. He began making some headway, running stringers, planting misinformation, that sort of thing. Apparently, about two weeks ago, Sable went to Sanders and stated she wanted to explore life in the Federal Witness Protection Program. As a millionaire.”

Bolan let a low, appreciative whistle. “Audacious. Her intel that good?”

“Langley thought so. Only there was a problem.”

“What’s new?”

“Exactly. Sanders went around his chain of command at Grozny Station to alert the agency to the deal. He used an open channel, not the secure lines at the covert house. Immediately after making the call he disappeared and is still missing.”

“What do they want me to do?” Bolan asked.

“Sanders had set procedures for irregular contacts. Since you’re on the ground, we want you to try to meet with Sanders. Failing that, follow up on anything you can shake loose.”

“Should be a piece of cake,” Bolan said dryly.

“I know, Striker,” Brognola answered. “But there’s an operative out there who may be in trouble and a treasure trove of information that could be damaging to the U.S. if it falls into the wrong hands.”

“Sable?”

“Sable,” Brognola agreed. “We think she has Garabend’s laptop now.”

“I’m a shooter, not a spy. You know that, Hal.”

“This is Chechnya, Striker, you can’t be anything but a shooter and expect to make headway.”

“All right, tell me everything I need to know.”

5

Bolan entered The Berliner casino.

The place was full, but not crowded, and he heard the spinning of roulette wheels and the dissonance of slot machines over the more general noise of the crowd.

Bolan gazed across the crowd. He kept his thoughts as unfocused and bland as the neutral expression on his face. He wasn’t looking for anything specific, he was simply soaking in details, waiting to see if his inner radar picked up any blips. He surveyed the casino from payout cage to bar, then from security desk to the table games.

The guards Bolan saw looked hard. It was easy to come by veteran killers in Chechnya, though the real hard cases drifted into the heavily ex-military Russian syndicates. He saw a fat man with two blondes—each supporting improbably large breast implants—on each of his arms. He saw a nervous-looking Asian man puffing away on a cigarette as the dealer turned over cards and took his chips. A broad-shouldered guy with a crew cut leaned against an elegantly decorated pillar fiddling with a gold bracelet.

The Berliner casino was a strange mix, influenced by the youth club in the basement of the property as well as the gaming floor. Wealthy clients mixed with the partygoers, young and old. The place was neither a dive nor too high end. There was a fair mix of Westerners in the crowd. Bolan nodded to himself. It was a good establishment to go unnoticed in, and he understood why Sanders had chosen it as a drop point and meet place.

Bolan walked over to the bar. He watched pretty girls in revealing dresses or the sexy cocktail waitresses as a cover for his perpetual surveillance. He ordered a beer in a pint glass, left the bartender a tip and took his beer to the casino cage where he changed some cash into chips with the help of a brunette in a low cut uniform and too much eye shadow.

The soldier shook his chips loosely in his hand and strolled toward the roulette table. He knew roulette was a sucker’s bet, but he’d do it the way Sanders wanted.

As Bolan approached the table, he idly second-guessed himself, wondering if his decision to come unarmed was wise. He was still operating under his journalist cover and a weapons charge by overzealous police troops could unravel the whole operation at this point.

Bolan eased up to the table and made eye contact with the croupier before putting the equivalent of a twenty-five-dollar token on Black 8.

Barbara Price had informed him of the Agency’s covert station house location in the Grozny downtown where he could make contact and get equipment as he needed. Bolan had chosen to bypass ordinary channels, at least initially.

Sanders had made his call from an emergency drop cutout phone and not from the Grozny to Moscow station line. There had been no explanation for this irregularity, and Bolan had chosen to follow Sanders’s lead in avoiding usual channels. Bolan’s paranoia was omnidirectional and hard earned.

The croupier called Red 23 the winner and took Bolan’s money. The soldier slid another chip onto Black 8 to replace the one he’d lost. The big-shouldered guy with the crew cut wandered over to watch the wheel. The fat man said something, and the two blondes barked laughter like trained seals. The wheel spun and the white ball jumped and bounced its way across the device. After a moment the ball settled into one of the slots and the croupier called Red 11 the winner.

Bolan had to admit the casino protocol was a wise set up despite the seeming cinematic feel of the practice. Someone could remain anonymous in the crowd, surveying the environment. The contact would make no discernible moves that threatened exposure if he was under surveillance. Either party could simply walk from the scene without commotion if something seemed askew.

The Executioner eyed his watch, then slid another chip onto Black 8. He almost wanted to place another bet, just to make things interesting, but he was afraid the diversity could potentially throw off his contact. Sanders didn’t know him by sight, so any variation from the established contact routine would be stupid. The Asian man, eyes glassy, left the blackjack dealer and stumbled up to the table as Bolan lost again. Two security guards in ill-fitting jackets watched, seemingly bored. They were joined by a third after a moment.

Bolan put his chip down on Black 8 again. The guy with the crew cut ordered a drink from a passing cocktail waitress. The Asian man changed Russian rubles into chips at the table and lit another cigarette. One of the blondes had moved behind the fat man and was whispering into his ear while she pressed her breasts against his back. The other woman leaned in beside him, hand in his lap under the table as he played.

“Red 4,” the dealer said.

Bolan put his chip on Black 8, once more.

“Final time,” he said in passable Russian.

There was a tense moment when the Asian man began throwing chips across the board, but he didn’t play Black 8 and Bolan relaxed as the croupier called an end to bets.

This was it, Bolan reflected. The time for the meet in the prescribed manner was past. Sanders hadn’t shown. It was official. Grozny was a problem.

Bolan watched the roulette ball bounce around the revolving wheel. As he watched it hit Green 00, nothing obvious had changed, but he smelled danger.

Throwing a chip down for the croupier, Bolan rose.

It seemed he could feel the weight of the sniper’s crosshairs on his exposed back, even though he knew that was ridiculous. Sanders hadn’t shown, but that didn’t necessarily mean the meet location had been compromised.

Bolan was sure Sanders was in trouble. He was sitting on a top-level asset itching to defect. He had avoided his station command, used asymmetrical communications and had missed a last chance emergency meet. Bolan frowned as he walked. Something wasn’t right.

He walked outside and flipped open his regular cell phone. He hit a number on his speed dial while hailing a taxi driver in a battered old Volvo. When the connection was made, he spoke briefly into the phone.

“Black 8 was a bust, stage two.”

Bolan hung up the phone, his cell line was open, and he’d relied upon brevity and obtuse langue for security. Such a protocol was better than getting caught in the open with a military satellite phone. Bolan climbed into the taxi.

BOLAN STUFFED HIS HANDS inside the pockets of his jacket and headed into the train station. The very last of the workday commuters were going home, and the old building was clearing out quickly as he entered. He wove his way through the thinning crowd, pushing away from the passenger areas and toward the freight docks.

Wire crates stuffed with chickens were set against the one wall. The smell of animals was strong. Bolan noted the hardy determination of the people in this war zone to continue on with their lives. He had seen it across the globe, but it never failed to give him hope for the human condition.

Bolan got lost in the crowd, then turned back the way he’d come, exiting the building. He cut through dank alleys and dodged across busy streets until he’d made it about two blocks away from the central train station.

He stopped in front of a window display filled with pictures of women in school uniforms being spanked or tied up. His eyes scanned the window, attempting to survey the street behind him in the reflection. The light was too bad for that, so he entered the porn shop.

The inside of the shop was illuminated with garish light from neon tubes. Skin magazines and the box covers for movies were stuffed into cheap racks. A section on the far wall was filled with various sexual devices and toys. The main room was filled with furtive-eyed men who avoided any contact with one another.

Bolan walked through the store, ignoring the other patrons. He entered the gloomy mouth to the hall where the peep shows were located. He could hear gasps and moans coming from behind the closed doors to the video monitor booths. He heard the slap of a hand on flesh and women’s cries—some in faux pleasure, many in pain. He moved past the doors. The layout for the coin-operated theaters was in a T-shaped hallway. He walked down the long leg of the T past the video booths.

Along the back wall were the live-show booths. He turned left at the juncture and went to the second to last door. An out-of-date pop song was blasting through a cheap stereo system. The light above the booth door showed red, indicating it was occupied.

The Executioner waited. After a few moments the song changed and a disheveled looking middle-aged man in a suit scurried out. He almost ran into Bolan and squeaked guiltily. He looked up, eyes appearing enormous behind thick glasses.

Bolan snarled down at him and the man hurried out of the hall.

The cramped booth stunk, and Bolan looked around, disgust on his face now that he was alone. He shoved the bolt on the door home, then fed a few coins into the wall slot to change the light outside to red.

A narrow opening slid back and, through smeary glass, Bolan caught a glimpse of a nude woman in a room surrounded by coin-operated windows. Bolan reached into his pocket and pulled a credit card from his wallet. He turned away from the window and squatted.

Using the edge of the credit card to spare his fingers any unpleasant contact, Bolan reached up under the seat mounted in the wall. The booth was known to be Sanders’s blind drop. He’d been running stringers in his surveillance operation against the institute and picking up hard copy materials from them in this booth.

Bolan paused as he felt his card touch something other than the wooden underside of the filthy little bench. He reached under the seat and immediately frowned. Sanders had attached a thin metal sleeve to hold items and the drop was stuffed full of papers.

In undercover intelligence work, drops were made in public places to explain movement patterns to unfriendly surveillance. They weren’t meant to be cache points. There was seldom longer than an hour between delivery and retrieval at such points, nor was one site usually meant for more than a single stringer.

Bolan slid out five manila envelopes of varying thickness. He knew things were bad. Operational security was dissolving all around him. He stood and slid the envelopes into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. He needed to get out and away from the drop site. He had to assume he was made. That didn’t necessarily mean the operation was over. He decided that if he needed to do open source or interview-based investigations, then it was still better for him to do it than risk the cover of another operative.

He wasn’t going to make it easy for the opposition, however.

Bolan unlocked the door to the booth and stepped out into the gloomy hallway. He sensed movement at the intersection of the theatre hall and looked up. The broad-shouldered man with the crew cut from the casino rounded the corner. Their eyes met, locked in recognition.

The soldier didn’t believe in coincidences. He couldn’t believe in them and continue to survive in a covert operations environment. He launched himself instantly, driving straight at the man, using his momentum to rise off the ground, swinging his right knee up. He drove his knee hard into the man’s ribs. The guy grunted and staggered backward from the impact.

Bolan landed and swept his hands up to grip the back of the man’s head in a maneuver designed to control him. The man’s reflexes were lightening quick, and he struck the inside of Bolan’s right arm at the nerve cluster just behind the elbow. Pain flashed up the Executioner’s arm and it was knocked aside, leaving an opening.

The crew cut man stepped forward and struck Bolan with a fist to his exposed ribs. The big American stumbled, bruised, hurt and surprised. He brought his arms up in front of him and instinctively turned to the side and raised a leg to ward off further blows.

Instead of pushing his advantage physically, the man from the casino shuffled backward and his right hand went for the small of his back. Bolan saw the movement and moved forward. The man’s hands reappeared holding a flat, black automatic pistol.

The Executioner stepped forward, moving to the outside of the muscled killer’s arm. The tight space of the hallway hampered his movements, slowing him. He twisted so that he faced the man at a nearly ninety-degree angle. Bolan’s left hand caught his adversary’s wrist just behind the pistol and, using the man’s own forward motion, pulled him off balance. Bolan used his right hand to snap a straight punch into his opponent’s temple.

The impact was loud in the confined space, and the man sagged under the sharp force. Bolan stepped away, twisting at the hips. The hand that had just delivered the brutal punch twisted to became a claw, sweeping the man’s head backward while Bolan pulled the gun hand back and thrust his chest out against the trapped arm, over extending the elbow.

The gun clattered to the floor and the man dropped as well. Without thinking, operating on instinct, Bolan lifted his foot and drove his heel straight down into the man’s throat. The killer’s eyes startled open wide, then slid upward into his head.

Bolan moved quickly. He glanced around him and saw no one. The altercation had lasted only heartbeats, and the computerized music system still blared out the same song. Bolan knelt and slid the man’s pistol into the small of his back before expertly patting down the body.

He pulled out a wallet, a cell phone and a knife. Bolan pocketed the items and stood. He smoothed down the front of his jacket over the bulge made by the envelopes from Sanders’s drop point. He held his head up and coolly walked out of the dark hallway.

Bolan’s nerves were on fire as he made his way for the door. He had no intention of being in the building when the body was found. He pushed through the door and out into the street. He looked around carefully. The point man might have had backup.

The soldier started walking, looking for a taxi. It was possible the man had been assigned surveillance and had decided to take Bolan out on his own. If he was a Russian stringer, then it was even possible he had been working alone on a “zone defense” surveillance. Bolan had no intention of taking that possibility for granted, however.

He needed to get to his safehouse and take stock of what he’d learned since hitting the ground in Chechnya, just four hours earlier. Bolan pushed his way through a lively crowd as he looked for a taxi. He didn’t see one, and he decided to head back toward the train station. He’d have his choice of taxis there, and the walk would give him a chance to shake out anyone shadowing him.

He crossed the busy strip, ignoring angry shouts and beeping horns. Such things were commonplace. This section of the city stank, and the cold, seasonal damp made him feel like his skin was covered in a greasy film. Reaching the other side of the street, Bolan ducked into the alley he’d used to reach the porn shop.

He stepped passed an unconscious man sprawled in the mouth of the alley. The man reeked of strong, cheap booze. Bolan entered alley, his nostrils flaring at the stench of rotting garbage and piles of refuse. Halfway down the alley he turned to look over his shoulder. No preternatural combat sense had warned him, just good tradecraft. A simple matter of being careful. He saw a silhouette enter the alley and he spun, dropping to one knee. He pulled his pistol free and crouched.

The figure at the end of the alley already had his pistol out and it barked twice. Two rounds buzzed through the air above Bolan’s head, just where his heart would have been were he still standing. He answered with a trio of 9 mm rounds.

His vision was blurred by the blinding flash of the weapon and his ears buzzed from the sudden, sharp reports. At the end of the alley he had a sense of a figure spinning away. He heard the sleeping man shout in surprise and saw him sit up.

Realizing that the figure was going for the cover of the building edge, Bolan popped up and shuffled quickly backward. The figure came around the edge of the alley and got off a hasty shot that sang wide. Bolan answered with a single shot designed to impact the wall near the figure’s head and spray chips. His round drove the gunman back behind cover and Bolan took his opportunity to escape out of the alley.

The Executioner hit the street running, shouldering his way through the crowd like a running back pushing for open field. He knocked several pedestrians to the ground, ignoring their cries of outrage.

He reached the front of the train station and jogged over to the line of waiting taxis, leaned forward and pushed some folded bills into the driver’s waiting hand. He rattled off an address to get the man moving and leaned back into the ratty seat as the driver pulled out into traffic.

The pistol was warm against the small of his back and its weight was reassuring. Finally the taxi driver made it out into the heavy traffic and Bolan allowed himself to relax. The driver said something at him in what he thought was a Georgian accent, and Bolan responded in colloquial Russian.

He reached into his jacket and felt the envelopes there. Brognola wasn’t going to be happy about this.

6

The town house was in an upscale, international resident section of the city, adjacent to the old financial district. Bolan had the taxi driver drop him a couple of blocks away, and he approached from the rear making use of the clean, wide alleys running between the houses.

It was a quiet neighborhood, and Bolan didn’t notice anyone up and moving about at such a late hour. It was place of good security due to the high concentration of foreign businessmen from the petroleum and mining industries. People here, Bolan knew, lived a hell of a lot better than they did in the rest of the Grozny metropolis.

At the back gate Bolan punched the code Barbara Price had given him into the keypad hidden behind a false plaque and disabled the alarm system. He entered the little walkway and shut the gate tightly behind him. At the back door of the safehouse, Bolan tipped up a bird feeder hanging from a low tree branch and got the key to the dead-bolt lock.

Once inside the two-story house he locked the door behind him and reengaged the alarm system. He went into the Western-style kitchen and pulled open the fridge door. The fridge was well stocked, and he pulled out a bright red Coca-Cola can. He leaned against the counter, guzzled the soda and tossed the empty can into the nearby garbage bin.

Bolan pulled the envelopes free of his jacket pocket and threw them on the kitchen table. He removed the handgun from the small of his back and set it next to the envelopes. He took off his jacket and sat down.

Bolan sighed and leaned forward, putting his head in his hands and closing his eyes for a moment. His knuckles were still slightly sore from where they’d struck the man in the porn shop.

After a moment he pulled the first of the five manila envelopes over to him. He reached behind him and drew the knife he had taken from the man he’d killed. He opened the folding handles with practiced flicks of his wrist, then used the knife blade to open the first envelope.

Inside Bolan found computer printouts. He shifted them around, studying the details. It was a schematic diagram. He frowned, knowing he didn’t have the technical expertise to know what the blueprints showed. Perhaps they were the electronics to the guidance systems DNI had been so worried Sable had procured. Perhaps they were something else.

Bolan pushed the schematic printout aside and opened up the next envelope. It contained more of the same. The third one showed a list of numbers running down a spreadsheet. He knew he was looking at an accounting ledger. The numbers showed transactions, dates, amounts and specific account numbers.

“You were getting some good stuff,” Bolan murmured to the absent Sanders.

He threw the papers on top of the pile of information, set the knife on the table and rubbed his eyes. He breathed deeply.

He picked up the next to the last envelope and opened it quickly. Several photos spilled out across the desk. He sat up, suddenly alert, completely surprised by what he was seeing.

In the photos two women were locked together, naked, on a bed. Bolan held them up. It showed a pretty, younger Asian woman kissing a blond woman. The Asian was attractive, but the blonde had an icy beauty, as hard as diamonds, that Bolan had only seen in expensive call girls.

He looked at the rest of the pictures. The women, already naked, progressed quickly beyond the kissing stage. In one shot the brunette had her face buried between the blonde’s smooth thighs. The blonde was looking down on the younger woman, her face haughty as she pulled at the woman’s hair.

“What’s this all about, Sanders?” Bolan wondered.

Bolan pulled two photos out of the pile and set them in front of him. He slid the rest back into their envelope. The two photos he kept out each showed close shots of the women’s faces. Bolan studied them intently, memorizing every detail. When he was satisfied he’d recognize them in person, he put them away and opened the final envelope from the drop.

Inside the envelope was folded piece of stationery. Bolan unfolded it and looked at what was written there. It was a simple series of numbers.

Bolan frowned. If the drop was a fast turnover situation, then it was possible the code was a simple system meant for Sanders to decipher quickly and then destroy, rather than sophisticated encryption.

The soldier got up and stretched. He went back out into the living area where he had seen a desk with a computer on it. It might help with research, but the house had been set up as a hideaway, not a field operations center, and communications were not infallibly secure. There were the cyberequivalents of blind drops, but Bolan had no intention of using them from this location unless absolutely necessary.

Bolan needed a good, down and dirty, field code Sanders might have instructed a stringer in. From the numbers, it seemed to be a replacement code of some sort. Bolan got to work with pen and paper. He was in Operational Theater Six. He added that to the last digit of the day of the date of the drop, then transposed the numbers with letters of the alphabet.

He tried the day Sanders had made his call, got a jumble of alphabet letters, then tried switching the letters out with the next letter in the alphabet. Nothing. He tried it with the letter prior and came up empty. He snarled in frustration and thrust the sheets of paper away.

Bolan got up and went to the refrigerator. He reached in and pulled out a green bottle of Heineken. He idly wondered what poor schmuck had gone all the way through college CIA recruitment only to find himself putting his security clearance to use stocking the fridge in some rarely used safehouse.

Bolan sat the beer down unopened. His mind was cluttered with images, snapshot memories of a hundred different events and a thousand different days from his past. He walked over to the doorway and reached up to grab the lip of the frame at the top. He dug his fingers in tightly and began to pull himself up in slow, deliberate movements. The exercise was an old rock climbing movement designed to strengthen the hands and forearms as much as the biceps and back.

After an easy fifteen chin-ups to get his blood moving, Bolan lowered himself and walked back to the table. He clenched and unclenched his fists, loosening the muscles of his grip. He shrugged back to stretch his shoulders and looked down at the table.

Bolan shook random thoughts away and sat, pulling his notes toward him. He looked at the numbers. They sat there, stubbornly refusing to give up their secrets. Then a slow smile slid across his face.

The soldier stood and crossed to the computer where he immediately logged on. He set his notes beside him at the desk and signed on to the Internet. He pulled up a Russian-English dictionary Website. He typed a word from his notes into the computer. The word came back unknown. Bolan threw that sheet down and picked up the sheet where he had transposed the letter corresponding with the number abstraction with the letter directly following it.

He hurriedly typed the series of letters into the computer. He got a match. He wrote the match down, then typed in each word until he translated the note in its entirety. When he was done he leaned back, feeling satisfied despite himself.

He read the note.

Tan is a dupe. Break all contact.

7

Bolan got out of the taxi on a secondary street in Grozny’s renovated financial district. The gigantic, gutted structure of the old Oil Ministry building cast long shadows over the Meltzer Import Export Emporium. The covert station house was a tasteful, discreet building with darkened, lead-lined windows and subdued walls.

The soldier surveyed the building. He’d tried to avoid making contact with Grozny station only because Sanders himself had avoided using the place in making contact with higher authority. Bolan would have preferred to slip in and out of this operations region without officially entering the fiefdom of the local station.

But Sanders’ failure to show for the meet and subsequent events had made such an approach unworkable. Bolan had no intention of leaving the drop envelopes with them. He’d put them in a safe at the secure house before taking a shower and going to bed.

Bolan entered the austere offices and approached a pretty receptionist behind a massive desk. A plaque on her desk read Ms. Pong, and her face seemed locked in a mask of perpetual boredom. She regarded Bolan with a disinterested stare. He smiled his good morning.

“You speak English?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“I have a question about goods.”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if you could tell me whether or not the futures in Chechen oil could be considered robust?”

The receptionist didn’t blink at the covert parole code. She stared up at Bolan with expressionless, black eyes. Her voice was monotone when she answered.

“I wouldn’t know. We only handle manufactured goods,” she said. “Please wait in there.”

The receptionist indicated a door set discreetly in the wall toward the back of the lobby, away from the elevator banks and half-hidden by a potted rubber tree plant. She reached a well-manicured hand under her desktop, and a muted buzzer sounded.

Bolan crossed the room quickly and went through the door. He heard an electronically controlled dead bolt slide into place as the door swung closed behind him. He looked around.

He was in a short, well-lit hallway. A line of comfortable chairs sat against a wall decorated in muted tones. Bolan sat, looking for the security cameras. Unable to spot them, he decided they were using telescopic fiber optics.

A door in the hallway opened and a man walked out. Bolan sized him up and didn’t like the vibe he picked up. He was Caucasian and big. Big in the way Eastern Europeans and Russians seemed to get as they slipped into middle age. The man stood almost a full head taller than Bolan and had to have weighted in at close to three hundred pounds. He looked like a bear right before hibernation—powerful muscles covered by copious amounts of fat.

The man wore a mustache and beard, shot through with gray, and his hairline receded prodigiously. His suit was expensive-looking, as was his gold watch. He strode up and stopped before Bolan, who had risen at the man’s approach.

“You are from the DNI,” the man said.

It wasn’t a question and he didn’t offer to shake hands.

“I already know that. Who are you?” Bolan said calmly.

The man stepped forward into Bolan’s space in a maneuver clearly designed to intimidate the newcomer. It was the kind of bluster that occurred every day in boardrooms, but it was a disrespectful move that could get a person killed in a prison yard or the wrong kind of bar.

Bolan stepped into the looming approach and both men stopped within a hairbreadth of butting chests. The man’s gut was considerable, but up close he looked strong enough to wrestle tigers. Bolan didn’t back down. The pair locked fierce gazes, neither man blinking.

“I see you’ve met case officer Kubrick,” a cultured voice from behind them said.

Bolan’s eyes flickered away, and he took in the second man who had just emerged from one of the office doorways. A mousy woman stood behind him, arms hugging a massive pile of folders and paperwork.

“You are here about the Sanders situation, correct?” the new arrival asked.

“Yes,” Bolan replied.

Bolan turned and put his shoulder into that of the man identified as Kubrick. He stepped forward, dipping slightly at the knees as he did so. As the Executioner stepped past Kubrick, he rose up and caught the heavier man in the ribs with his shoulder, where he had a leverage advantage. Bolan brushed past the larger man, unbalancing him so that he stumbled.

Kubrick swore, and Bolan turned his back on him as the second man addressed him.

“I am Claus Lich, station principal.”

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan said, extending his hand.

“That is my director of operations, Herman Kubrick. He’s been running the institute case.” Lich met Bolan’s eyes with his own unaffected gaze. “He’ll be your liaison in this matter. Herman?”

“Yes, Mr. Lich?”

Kubrick stepped forward, brushing down the front of his suit where Bolan’s nudge had left him disheveled.

“Please show Mr. Cooper every courtesy. Bring him up to speed and then provide him with whatever help we can offer.”

Lich turned and ushered the tepid little woman into his open office door ahead of him. He turned back before he followed her in. He looked at Bolan like a lab tech trying to classify a distasteful, but possibly deadly, new strain of virus.

“Cooper.” Lich nodded.

Bolan nodded back.

Lich gave Bolan a freezing smile before disappearing into his office. He’d never looked toward Kubrick again after giving his instructions.

Bolan frowned reflectively as he watched the station principal’s door bang shut. He turned and looked at Kubrick.

“Well, Herman, we going to get this done?” Bolan said.

“Call me Kubrick, asshole. Follow me.”

Kubrick turned and walked toward the end of the hall where Bolan had entered. He moved fast for such a big man and he didn’t look back to see if Bolan was following him.

The Executioner looked impassively at the man’s retreating back before relenting and following him. Someone had tried to kill him, and Bolan wasn’t going to let macho posturing or turf wars keep him from his mission. Something was wrong in Grozny, and he meant to find out what.

“HOLD MY CALLS,” Kubrick said into his cell phone. “Tell them I have a breakfast meeting. I shouldn’t be gone long.” Kubrick hung up.

“Where are we going?” Bolan asked.

“I’m hungry. I know a place where we won’t be interrupted and the help knows how to mind their own business.”

“I imagine you know quite a bit about the restaurant scene,” Bolan remarked.

“Screw you.”

Kubrick navigated Grozny efficiently, using diplomatic credentials to pass quickly through security checkpoints. The Chechen insurgents had, for the most part, been pushed into the Caucasus Mountains and the bulk of combat operations were taking place along the Georgian border.

Bolan looked out the tinted windows of Kubrick’s Mercedes. He watched landmarks slide by they drove across the busy, modern streets of the city center. He had a feeling Kubrick didn’t spend too much time in the slums or out in the bush.

He and Kubrick were like two bulls in a field and butting heads came naturally to them. Bolan was an interloper on Kubrick’s turf, and Lich’s for that matter. Bolan had done his homework at the safehouse, and he was nominally well versed in the history of both men.

Lich had come up through the ranks old school. He’d been a logistics officer for Air America operations in the Asian theater during the sixties and had then been assigned to Berlin, running counterintelligence operations against Communist incursions on all levels. He’d made his bones working the iron curtain and he’d stayed there.

Other than that cursory background, Brognola hadn’t been able to access Lich’s agency file—a fact the big Fed had found very troubling. Lich’s background was buried so deep that Bolan, through Brognola, had been frozen out.

Kubrick was a different story. He was a classic Agency success story. He’d combined adequate fieldwork with a talent for playing the sycophant. He’d started out doing interrogation of captured North Korean infiltrators with the Defense Intelligence Agency before getting assigned to Berlin under Lich in the early eighties.

He bounced around playing the role as Lich’s number two for decades. Like Lich, he was rumored to have a considerable financial portfolio built using information gleaned during classified operations. The pair of them were known as down and dirty operators who brushed the line often—but as of yet no one had suggested that the duo had actually crossed it.

But Sanders had jeopardized his operational security to place that call from outside of station control.

Bolan mulled it all over while Kubrick drove. After about fifteen minutes they pulled up to a valet parking lot in front of a moderately expensive-looking restaurant in the International District. Such a place was real luxury—in a place like Grozny. A smiling employee in a red suit, took the keys from the massive Kubrick and gave him a paper ticket.

“This is on your expense account, not mine,” Bolan said, playing his part, as they entered the restaurant.

Once they were seated and had ordered food and coffee, the game was ready to begin.

“What do you know?” Kubrick demanded.

“I’m here to learn,” Bolan said, sidestepping. “Just start at the beginning. Walk me through it like I was a child.”

“Not much of a stretch,” Kubrick grunted.

“Then it should be easy,” Bolan said with a shrug.

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